OT: YUM was Re: [NBLUG/talk] linux distro

[Bob Blick]

Warren Raquel said:

> I've never used SuSE so I have no idea how Yast works. How does it
> compare to YUM?

I've never used YUM, but isn't that just an update tool?

If you've ever used Windows, you know Control Panel tries to unify all
things related to setup, software, system tuning and settings in one
place, with a unified interface.

YaST does the same thing for linux. It has two interfaces, one is
curses-based, and the other is for X.

Unlike the Mandrake and RedHat equivalents, YaST is quite mature, actually
works and is quite complete. You really don't need to hand edit anything
anymore. Yes, I have used the other distros ;-) and their setup tools are
not as complete. YaST has been around forever and SuSE has been improving
it all along.

Of course, that means you are not _forced_ to learn quite as much about
linux as you would with the other distros, but it's much less frustrating
to new users, and to someone who already knows how and when to edit
inetd.conf, restart init, etc, I still like having everything in one place
(The files are still there and you can edit them by hand if you want). And
YaST remembers to restart affected processes, something we all have
forgotten to do at one time or another.

Mark is right, they no longer do iso images but their ftp install does
work if you want it free. Did I say the books that come with the boxed
editions are very good?

Cheerful regards,

Bob